In a typical cellular radio system, also referred to as a wireless communication system, user equipments, also known as mobile terminals and/or wireless terminals communicate via a Radio Access Network (RAN) to one or more core networks. The user equipments may be mobile stations or user equipment units such as mobile telephones also known as “cellular” telephones, and laptops with wireless capability, e.g., mobile termination, and thus may be, for example, portable, pocket, hand-held, computer-included, or car-mounted mobile devices which communicate voice and/or data with the radio access network.
The radio access network covers a geographical area which is divided into cell areas, with each cell area being served by a base station, e.g., a Radio Base Station (RBS), which in some networks is also called “eNB”, “eNodeB”, “NodeB” or “B node” and which in this document also is referred to as a base station. A cell is a geographical area where radio coverage is provided by the radio base station equipment at a base station site. The base stations communicate over the air interface operating on radio frequencies with the user equipment units within range of the base stations.
In some versions of the radio access network, several base stations are typically connected, e.g., by landlines or microwave, to a Radio Network Controller (RNC). The radio network controller, also sometimes termed a Base Station Controller (BSC), supervises and coordinates various activities of the plural base stations connected thereto. The radio network controllers are typically connected to one or more core networks.
A cellular telephone network according to the Long Term Evolution (LTE) specifications is an example of a telecom network of today. The LTE specifications can be seen as an evolution of the current wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) specifications. An LTE system uses orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) as a multiple access technique (called OFDMA) in the downlink (DL) from system nodes to user equipments (UEs). LTE channels are described in 3GPP, as well as Physical Channels and Modulation, among other specifications. An International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced) communication system uses an internet protocol (IP) multimedia subsystem (IMS) of an LTE, high-speed packet access (HSPA), or other communication system for IMS multimedia telephony (IMT). In the IMT advanced system (which may be called a “fourth generation” (4G) mobile communication system), bandwidths of 100 MHz and larger are being considered. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) promulgates the LTE, HSPA, WCDMA, and IMT specifications, and specifications that standardize other kinds of cellular communication systems.
Telecom nodes such as base stations are allotted a limited amount of capacity usage in the form of licenses from operators of telecommunication networks. The capacity usage is in the form of a number of a specific resource, such as a number of Radio Resource Control (RRC) connected users, an amount of Mbits/second, a number of physical resource blocks, etc. Often a grace period is used for a license. The concept “grace period” refers to methods and mechanisms for enabling the operators of telecommunication networks to use soft capacity license limits. When a capacity license limit is reached and exceeded, a time-limited grace period is started. After the time limit has passed, the capacity license is enforced, unless an increase in the capacity license is purchased and installed or activated. In that case, the grace period is reset and it will be possible for the operator to use the grace period again with the new licensed capacity level or new amount of capacity usage.
Existing grace period solutions are not guaranteed to automatically provide the intended usefulness for telecom operators, since a grace period may be triggered in the wrong situations. Examples of wrong situations are capacity usage spikes, as opposed to prolonged and sustained capacity usage increases.